Reading, for this course, establishes the context (key words or concepts, historical or local detail, ideas, problems, questions), and as the course progresses, the archive of readings serves as a kind of “mini-discipline” for class members. Reading includes, too, the various projects that have emerged from the course. From the moment a new text is assigned, students can frame it as a potential source for a writing project, not simply an object of study. So, on a first day of a reading, rather than having an open discussion “about the text,” we might ask:
- How would you write about this text? What makes it promising as a text to work with?
- How does this text advance the conversation we’ve been having to this point? How might it link to or extend what we’ve built so far?
- How does this new text and our responses to it allow us to think about the role writing plays in making meaning?